


When Norse Gods Meddle Part 1B

by nagasvoice



Series: When Norse Gods Meddle [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Losers (2010)
Genre: Dogs, F/F, F/M, M/M, Superheroes, Team UFO
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 09:10:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4601178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagasvoice/pseuds/nagasvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No, I didn't plan out any of this.<br/>Neither did our guys, did they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> This falls before an earlier-posted chapter, so I had to do shuffling around chapters here.  
> Not beta'd because I started so late--if you notice typos or weirdness, by all means comment so I can fix it.
> 
> This is preceded by a different bit, part 1A, here:  
> ["Lullaby"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10484583)  
> 

 

Cougar tilted back his head just so, sliding the brim downward and letting the crown of his hat rest against the high back of the rocking chair. It moved his shoulders the slightest degree, but this time the baby didn’t stir. The Poochlet just made some snorkeling noises into the bandanna Cougar sacrificed as a drool cloth. The wad felt cool and wet on his upper arm, starting to soak through his shirt. Various bodily aches and pains and urgencies had been tapping for attention in that remote way he found useful during ops, but they could be endured for awhile longer. He shifted the toe of one boot a bit, then his other knee, and shifted his weight differently across the hard pan of the rocking chair, which hurt in a new way. That made his humming bobble for a moment, but he caught up the thread mechanically and kept going. His throat was rough, symptom of what the Poochlet already had. If it was an oncoming cold, he was ignoring it. Half the grownups in the house barely registered how bad they were until they faceplanted for the day. Or three days, in some prominent cases.

Well, except for Steve, Captain America, supersolder extreme, who no longer caught colds or flu bugs for more than an hour or so, but who remained solidly sympathetic. Apparently Steve told Jake a little about nearly dying of asthma as a skinny kid in Brooklyn. Jake had stopped his teasing about raspy voices. Good thing, given that he came down with it two days after that.

Cougar wasn't stopping his croaky hum just to avoid that annoying rustle and tickle in his lungs. It might even help to breathe deeper and use his lungs more, help clear out what he knew very well was pneumonia trying to happen.

Besides, it wouldn’t calm down the baby to ask someone else to sing while Cougar rocked; it was the vibration in the body holding the baby that calmed enough for sleep.

Definitely Pooch’s boy; this child did not want to conk out and miss the party. If people were up doing and talking and crashing around, he was awake. If lights were on, he was up waving his arms and calling to be picked up. Give him a half an hour nap and you moved wrong, he was rested and crowing and ready to play again. Another ten minutes and he’d get cranky, overtired, start sneezing and fussing-- for what he didn’t know, but something-- and it’d take an age to get him settled so he could breathe better.

A shape shifted on the camp bed nearby and sat up, yawning, stretching in the dim red safelight they ran at night down here in the basement.

Jolene murmured,”Hey, Cougar, you did it.” Her voice sounded worse than his. She muffled a cough. Probably still felt crummy too, since she'd resisted resting longer than any of them.

“Ai,” Cougar murmured.

“Let me put him down, give you a break,” she whispered.

“Mm hmmmm?” Cougar asked.

“Yeah, he might fuss a little if he wakes up, but he’ll go back to sleep. Gimme a sec and I’ll get him a bottle.”

“Mmm.”

She moved around quietly, ruffled the stuffed toys in the crib crowded up next to Cougar, and turned to him. Her hands came down, slid into the blanket and then under the baby’s weight, lifted him up out of Cougar’s arms.

“Hey, hey, no fussing, go back to sleep, child a’ mine,” she said firmly, and laid him down in the crib. Cougar held out the warm blanket, she grinned at him and took it with a wordless murmur, and tucked it around the baby. There were a few mutterings, a suckling noise. “Magic!” she said then.

“Mmm,” Cougar agreed.

“Now see if you can get your arms and legs working again,” Jolene said.

Cougar grunted and shifted around, stretching. At a gurgling noise from the child, he froze for a moment, and Jolene chuckled.

“Easy there, little man,” she told the child, and adjusted the blanket. “Good grief, what time is it?”

“Late,” Pooch’s scratchy voice rose from the far side of the camp bed.

Cougar grunted.

“Oh, Clay swapped watches around with Cap and Clint, you’re not up until six am,” Pooch whispered. “I’m up in twenty, you might as well fall over awhile you can.”

Cougar sighed.

“You’re welcome. Want me to kick Jensen off the net and send him to bed for you?”

Cougar nodded, putting one finger over his lips in warning.

Pooch just grinned, sitting up and rummaging for his boots. “Yeah, I’ll tell him to be quiet on pain of triple death, all three of us will kill him. Hey Cougar--thanks, man.”

“De nada.” Cougar stretched, grunted in pain, and stood up. Walking stiffly, he wandered past the crowded camp cots to the improvised latrine they’d set up down here in the storm basement. He pulled the door shut and tried to be quiet about it. Noise echoed a bit inside the ridiculous shell of cast iron bathtubs that they’d welded in place around this part of the basement.

He’d just pushed open the door again when he froze at the huge, loud noise of storm sirens whooping up to full wail. The horns were at least a quarter mile away, but sounded like they came from just on top of the roof here.

The little red safelight over the latrine door faded into complete dark.

“Oh goddammit to hell,” came Clay’s growl from upstairs, followed by a rumble from Roque.

Two breaths more, and the baby was crying.

Another moment and faintly, beneath the roar of the sirens, he could hear mother and child. Jolene stopped swearing and started murmuring and rocking, with the regular creak of the chair under her. The baby whined a little and quieted.

Jensen came clattering down the basement stairs, flashlight bobbing. “Yep, it’s the real thing this time,” he whispered to the basement at large. He sounded raspy still, but better than yesterday. “Nice big fat storm cell, coupla funnels reported thirty miles away, lots of hail coming down. Roque’s on funnel watch with the cool goggles, power is out again. Cap’s firing up the second generator up there. Want me to fire up this one?”

“No, save the juice. We don’t need it down here yet,” Pooch said.

“Gotcha,” Jensen said, and came down the last of the creaking steps. “Hey Cougs, we swapped watches--”

“Yes,” Cougar said, making his way toward the camp bed he should have been using for the last two hours.

“There you are,” Jensen said, long arms reaching out. Big hands gripped on Cougar’s shoulders. “Jeez, man, you're burning up-- some cold, huh? And hey, you just barely got the tyke to sleep, and blammo, huh?”

Cougar sighed.

Jensen patted him and stepped past, moving away. “Well, hey, Miss Jolene, if you need I can take the next baby-rockin’ turn. Not like I can sleep in this racket, or get any work done. Local nets are down, I can hop onto extra satellites but it’s not a lot of use right now with all my local storm watch guys knocked out. I’ve got a relay volleying the satellite feeds to the local guys I can reach, but the local news guys are up and down so much I dunno if they’re getting much of it.”

She murmured something, and he started talking about statistical uncertainties to her, and then apparently to the baby. The rocking chair started creaking at a faster pace.

Cougar toed off his boots and rolled up in the blankets on the camp bed. Jensen was still talking to the baby when Cougar relaxed finally into the blankets. If Jensen was talking, things were under control. Or as much as they’d ever be.

Pooch said something about all of Jensen’s chatter being guaranteed as a lullaby for babies _and_ snipers, but Cougar ignored it. Fell asleep, sirens and all.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Valkyries too?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, did not plan any of it. Just grabbing all the props and swinging wildly, that's us.

“Jake,” Cougar says quietly, staring out the kitchen window.

The geek in the glasses doesn’t even glance around from staring at Steve. Or call him Captain America, given the stern look on the guy’s face.

There’s cracking noises outside.

Cougar feels his lips curling up off his teeth. He pulls open a cabinet, unclips his Stoner rifle, slams in a mag.

Jake says, “Got it, sniper kitty. Figured it was gonna get weird out there.”

“How come?” his sister asks, climbing into a coat by the door.

“Because nobody _ever_ sees Heimdall going off having adventures on his own. He’s like Cougs, he sits back and keeps an eye on things. QED, it ain’t Heimdall. So who could make us all see Heimdall?” He yanks open the kitchen door, points a warning forefinger at his sister to go back and check on her daughter--it’s perfectly visible on his face, not a word said--and then he’s gone.

“Who?” she asks, angry and frightened..

Steve makes a face. “Loki. Let’s get back everyone away from the windows, huh?”

Cougar isn’t waiting. He’s already headed out the door with his Stoner rifle in hand. It may be a matter for wits more than firepower, but he likes having the firepower in hand. Even if he suspects, from the stories, that Loki may be able to turn his gun into a pretzel with an offhand gesture. Or make him think it is.

Outside, things have already gone from nasty to frightening.

Heimdall has turned into Max, white suit and all, waving his arms and raving in something that sounds vaguely Germanic.

Roque groans, tries to roll over, fails.

“Oooh, he really got you a good one there,” Jake says, and picks up the gun fallen out of Roque’s broken grip.

Max shakes Clay around like he’s the size of a child. Max seems taller than any of the pictures they’ve found, too.

“ _Say my name!”_ the figure roars.

Clay can’t make much noise, just gurgle a bit.

“Loki Lauffeysson,” Jake says easily, bored. “So where did you park Max and his twin brother, now you’ve had all the fun out of them?”

The figure in the white suit spins around, dropping Clay like a forgotten toy. Clay rolls away a few feet and manages to lift his head enough to find Roque, and groans at him.

Roque groans back.

Well, that’s their relationship in a nutshell, really.

Jake sighs, waves one hand casually. “Sad, isn’t it? Jeez, how can you miss with twin evol geniuses? Or supposed to be. For such smart guys they seem to be pretty dumb in the real world, just lots of money to throw at things. They don’t even have a sense of humor when you come right down to it, do they?”

Max roars something and parts of it come out as garbled words, a fragment here and there coming through. It sounds just like the Wicked Witch screaming as she’s melting in front of Dorothy.

Jake nods. “I mean, twins, c’mon, shoulda been miles of fun to be had there, right? But naw, for criminal masterminds, they’re just not your best material. They didn’t bother to sort it out when it was really one of them or it was you, right? You gave up on them coming up with something cool on their own and _you_ planted the idea of snukes, right? And then they couldn’t even follow up with the right math and tech guys to make it work. Oh, Tony Stark got it down--what, ten minutes, tops?--he figured out the cube, and how he’d have to invent some hairy stuff to use it, and then he went and fucking did it, too. Powered that cool suit with that same tech, didn’t he? But yeah, the twins never got it. Too busy dropping Indian physicists off of big tall Saudi buildings and getting nowhere, yeah? So, was it a laugh a minute, watching their antics? Simplest thing in the Asgard arsenal and they couldn’t even get it right, yeah?”

The figure just kind of roars in rage. Not Germanic, this time. Not a language that Cougar understands, but Jake seems to get the general idea anyway.

“Sorry, dude, Thor drops in sometimes but he isn’t here right now. I guess he had some kinda giant blue guys to fight with. That oughta make him happy, right? That’s those storm cells popping up all over, you mighta noticed on the way in. Oh gee, where those guys your buddies or something?”

Cougar does manage to dive onto Jake in time to throw them both out of the way of the blue power blast that zaps the grass and about a ton of topsoil and starts the side of the house on fire. He keeps them rolling, too, rifle clanking against Jake’s side and back, and when Cougar comes back around onto his knees with Jake under him, he’s swung the rifle muzzle up and around and focused on the moving green and gold figure.

Flashy outfit, easy to track.

But there’s five of them. Five duplicates of the figure waving around.

Of course Cougar plants a 3-burst into each one, and another set of six shots go into the darker figure ducking away among the trees. He listened to Thor’s stories, after all.

Jake heaves up under Cougar’s legs, yelling. “Noooo--”

The dark figure falls, gets up again, staggers, swings around with his wand spitting blue lightning--and looks straight down into the freckled face of Jake’s niece.

She holds up a simple y-shaped slingshot point-blank in his face and lets go of the rubber.

Jake gives a little whimper and clutches Cougar’s leg in both hands.  That's because he's dropped Clay's gun somewhere in the dry grass.

The dark figure topples backward, wand falling from its grip.

But Loki doesn’t stay down.

“Bad!” she says sternly, snatching up the wand in one hand, swings it around like a bat, and clubs him with the tail of it. He goes down. “Don’t you hurt my Teo Cougar and my uncle Jake! You hurt my uncle Clay and my uncle Roque. _Don’t you dare!”_

The figure on the ground is not _staying_ down, though. The gold horns, the green armor, the whole bit, he’s getting up--

Which is when the ugly mutt they rescued, the slobbery beast which Beth and Roque have been training for a couple of months now, has burst out of the side of the burning house, coming from way down in the basement, and is tearing off down the slope, silently. Not barking. Not uttering a sound. Nothing, until eighty pounds of dog goes airborne in a long arc and crashes into Loki’s armored chest and is tearing hell out of his helmet and arms and making horrible noises.

Jake gives a yell. “Beth, get away, get away now!”

Beth says, “Sweetie Pie, no! NO!”

The dog is tearing off strips of leather and bits of things that sparkle and tinkle and explode and spray colored sparks. It doesn’t make her stop. A big poof of smoke goes up and Sweetie Pie just piles back on him, making noises like she’s tearing into a woolly mammoth at the dawn of the Pleistocene. Dire wolves, maybe.

“Beeeeeth, no,” Jake wails. “The _wand!_ Beth, the game is the _wand!”_

Beth staggers back, hears him yelling somehow. She turns herself around and starts running away, carrying the wand swinging wildly in one hand and the slingshot in the other. Oh, she is running hard. It’s the world’s best soccer goal ever, and nobody else will ever know.

Captain America is already running out there toward the little girl and the dog and the figure fallen in the piles of leaves.

“Get to Jake,” he tells her, giving her a pat on her way, neither of them slowing down.

A few moments later and Clint is out there piling onto Loki with rope, and Natasha is helping with a gag, and most of the others are down there except Cougar’s sister, who is busy emptying a fire extinguisher or three onto the burning side of the house. She always did have a strict sense of priorities. Once that’s secure, she’ll probably head over next to help Clay and Roque, who have managed to crawl closer together and are working on sitting up. They probably shouldn’t do that, but they are anyway.

Down the slope, Steve has a grip on both the dog and Loki, holding them apart. It’s kind of impressive. Sweetie Pie is clearly ready to rip into Loki the moment he gets in reach, but she’s not trying to rip into Steve to do it. Also impressive, honestly.

From the exclamations out there, it appears the loose soil in the gopher holes had something to do with Loki pitching over like that, but Cougar already knows that nobody’s going to add that in later on and spoil the glory.

Beth is still running up the slope as hard as she can, hauling that wand, not stopping for anyone. Jennifer looms over them, yelling the whole way as her daughter runs, holding out her arms, clutches the little girl who falls into her grip. First thing, Jennifer plucks the weapons out of her daughter’s hands, flings them at the two men, and sweeps her daughter up in her arms for some time. Hugging the stuffings out of her.

“Oh my Gawd, Beth, you were so brave, I’m so proud of you, but you scared me to death, _please_ never do anything like that again, you were so brave, please God you should never _have_ to do anything like that again--”

When Jennifer finally turns to Jake and Cougar, clutching her daughter fiercely, she too looks like a Valkyrie.

“Who taught her _that_ one?” says the girl’s mother.

“Erm,” Jake says, staggering up to one knee by leaning on the butt end of the fancy wand.

“And _who_ gave her the slingshot?”

Cougar takes a deep breath. “My fault,” he says.

Jennifer narrows her eyes at him.

He really can’t help it when his tone shrinks into a small, pathetic imitation of Jake’s wheedling voice. “It was my best one.”

The narrow gaze blinks, relaxes, and then Cougar is getting crushed in a four-way Jensen squeeze, and somebody’s crying onto his neck, and he’s patting everybody indiscriminately and reassuring them with wordless little noises that he also can’t help making.

“Oh Gawd, Cougs, you and Beth were so _awesome,”_ Jake says, and maybe he’s kind of blubbering the words, wailing a bit.

Cougar hugs him back very hard. The wand is getting in the way, but nobody cares.

“You know what I wanna know?” Beth says in a small voice, sniffling a little where she’s squashed between all of them.

“What?” her mother says, likewise sniffling.

“What did he do with the two Maxes? He never told us,” Beth says.

Cougar drops his head into Jake’s strong neck, makes a mortified choked noise of horror and astonishment. She’s a Jensen, by God. Then he hears himself starting to laugh.

Big, loud, bellowing cries of amazement and joy and relief, like he hasn’t laughed enough in thirty years, and by God now is when he will be making up the shortfall for awhile.

Laughing at the sky is probably good for him, he thinks dimly, while Jake lays him down on the grass and insists on letting him laugh while everybody else goes to fix up Roque and Clay, and fix up the burnt bits of the house with makeshift boards, and of all people it's Aisha who greets Thor when he shows up to help.

Thor stands over Cougar nodding a bit as people talk to him, and he takes the staff from Jake and makes it fold up somewhere, and then he leans down and pats Cougar’s shoulder. “Great shooting, I hear. Don’t worry, we’ll get Loki home where he belongs. I hear Beth Jensen was a very worthy warrior in her own right!”

Cougar blinks at him, gives a few hiccups, and nods. “She was,” he says.

Thor smiles. “She will need all of you to train her well.”

“Yes,” Cougar says, still blinking, and Thor grins and strides away, saying something that the gunman should be fine now.

The rest of the crowd is still there, staring down at Cougar.

“Be afraid,” Clint says out of the side of his mouth, and grins, offering him a hand to get up.

“Yeah,” Cougar agrees, meeting the amused squint of his fellow sniper. He doesn't take the hand. He kinda knows what's coming, from the look in Clint's eye.

“So we basically got the Big Bad Nasty Norse God of Lies felled by a _little girl,”_ Clint says then, with satisfaction.

Cougar falls back into the grass, laughing even harder than before. Kind of yipping, really.

“Wearing My Little Pony hair ties and singing _the theme song,”_ Clint says, with extra relish.

Cougar is clutching his ribs and rolling weakly in place, he's laughing so hard. “Oh stop!”

Clint leans closer, bracing out his hands on his knees. “Threatening him in Spanish with _Dora the Explorer_ quotes.”

“No, no, no, how could she use _that--”_ He's lost the hat, he's having seizures of giggles, it _hurts_ to laugh this hard for so long.

“Trust me, she managed,” Aisha says, folding her arms and grinning down at Cougar.

“You enjoying this?” Natasha asks, cocking her head to one side.

“Hell yes,” Clint says.

“You ever see him _lose_ it like this before?” Aisha turns to Clay and Roque, who have hobbled up onto their feet and are kind of holding each other up. Pooch is trying to strap more duct tape around them and the bits of board he's used as splints, and fussing about them moving when they ought to be on a crash cart, both of them. They just ignore the Pooch's fussing, like always.

“Nope,” Roque says.

Clay shakes his head, and starts steering both of them away toward the kitchen door. Moving slow, but by God, they're up and walking, as always.

“Just can't kill 'em with a meat ax,” Clint says, as if he's reading Cougar's brain waves, grinning, and it's even funnier to know the thought is so clearly understood.

Clay and Roque are up and _walking._ That seems even more amazingly funny. They survived smack-talking at Loki, who could've crushed Roque like a bug, and broke Clay's neck, but somehow, among all the distractions, Loki still didn't quite manage to do it.

It's like all those other monsters who somehow never quite manage to finish them off.

Cougar kicks his boots in the grass laughing.

“Boy, this is so out of character,” Aisha says.

“Maybe why it's this bad,” Natasha says, tilting her head the other way.

“Somebody gonna smack my brother out of that fit, or am I gonna haveta do it myself?” Cougar's sister demands, between the hammer blows she's pounding at the house boards.

Cougar lifts one hand pointing in her direction, and howls, clutching himself.

“What's he saying?” Jake asks then, pushing through. “What? What's that mean?”

“Valkyries,” Clint says.

Cougar points at all the women around them, catches the skeptical expressions on all those fabulous eyebrows, and he loses it yet again, wheezing.

When Jennifer and Beth run up and look at him, Cougar just holds up his hands, waving, too weak to even clap his palms together for them. “Bravo,” he says. “Bravo,” and then Beth is hugging him again, very hard.

“C'mon, Cougs, it's okay, it's all over,” Jake says then, and kneels down next to him. “It's okay, we're all fine now. Well, give Roque a coupla months of rehab, for a given value of _fine,_ we are talking the Losers here--” His hands urge Cougar to sit up, where he kind of hangs in Jake's support, wheezing gently between smaller spasms of giggles. “Here, here, take it easy there,” and he brushes the hair back out of Cougar's face, and takes the hat that Beth brings him, and he fits it on Cougar's head at the correct angle. Or close enough, under the circumstances.

That, of course, is when the dog gets loose from somebody's grip, plunges in between them and knocks off the hat and slobbers happily all over Cougar's face because he's down that low and within reach. Cougar just grins, letting her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to complicated series posting, this is the second bit, part 1B.
> 
> Earlier part 1A is here.  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/3203072#work_endnotes


End file.
